


The Symmetry of Spaces

by stardropdream (orphan_account)



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Ableism, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 10:53:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/697483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The point is, you never forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Symmetry of Spaces

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ October 6, 2012.

Erik is staring at the chair.   
  
He stares in the way most people stare when they see him like this for the first time. Charles has grown used to it, although he can’t say he’s at peace with it. Seeing Erik so suddenly like this is like tearing open an old wound – one he’d foolishly thought was beginning to heal. But Erik’s face is painfully clear – fresh and open, despite the helmet. Like he’s hurting for him, even if he’s trying to smother that response.  
  
“Erik,” Charles greets, almost viciously polite. He clears his throat, soften his words. “What brings you here?”  
  
He doesn’t answer immediately. His eyes drift between the sharp metal of his chair and Charles’ eyes. Like he doesn’t know where to settle them.   
  
Charles begins to feel uncomfortable. The helmet looms, a silent entity that leaves Charles feeling blind. He can feel Hank on the upstairs’ floor, working diligently, mind full of science and equations. Blissfully ignorant to his visitor. Sean and Alex are out on the grounds, one thinking of girls and music, the other enjoying the warm summer air. But Erik is a blank space. Like a ghost. Like he isn’t there at all. Charles shifts in his chair, eyes trying to meet Erik’s.  
  
“Are you still injured?” Erik asks, voice hushed.  
  
Charles smiles and with anyone else it would have seemed sarcastic, maybe even mocking. He longs to be able to forgive Erik – he knows it was all a mistake, knows there were risk from the very beginning.  
  
“If you mean my legs, you’ll be relieved to know that they don’t hurt me,” Charles says, prim, spreading his fingers over his knees and unable to recognize the feeling. It’s like touching someone else’s body. Not his own. “In fact, I haven’t felt anything since—”  
  
He stops speaking at once, unable to stomach finishing that sentence, dredging up what he’d been cheerfully stuffing away for the last few weeks.   
  
He clears his throat. “They don’t hurt me, no. Truly, the absence of pain is a sort of privilege. And we all know how privileged I’ve always been, yes?”  
  
This time his smile is a touch sardonic, mocking towards himself. He sees Erik frown.  
  
“I know,” Charles says with a laugh. “Self-deprecation doesn’t suit me.”  
  
There is a long silence.  
  
“Erik, why are you here?”  
  
Erik sighs out through his nose, frown deepening. He, finally, meets Charles’ gaze and holds it, not looking at the chair again.  
  
“There’s something I want,” Erik says finally.  
  
“And that is?”  
  
“Cerebro,” Erik admits but with the kind of finality typical of him – as if it is inevitable that he gets what he wants.  
  
“I wasn’t aware you needed it. It was my understanding that you have Shaw’s telepath now,” he says and immediately notices the way Erik tenses up at the sound of Shaw’s name. .  
  
“Her mind could always stretch further,” Erik says, voice as tight as his shoulders.  
  
“Indeed,” Charles says pleasantly. Or, as pleasantly as one could be, in the circumstances. “Unfortunately, Cerebro isn’t very portable. Nor is it rebuilt completely. Hank and I do the best we can between us, of course, but…”  
  
“Then give me the plans.”  
  
“I’m sorry, my friend,” Charles says, or tires to say, because the words become choked and he has to look away. He clears his throat. “Pardon me.”   
  
There is a stilled silence in which Charles only has his own thoughts to spin around his mind. The absence of Erik’s is almost too painful. It seems too strange, too isolation. He hates feeling this stranded. He always had his easy arrogance, his manners, money, powers… all these things had aided him. He’d felt untouchable before. Now he is nothing but a _cripple_ \--  
  
Self-deprecation _really_ doesn’t suit him. He knows it’s unfair to say he’s nothing now. Still, ‘cripple’ is a thought that burns against his mind, sharp and painful and raw.   
  
Through all this, Erik is silent. Charles shifts, uncomfortable with how open and exposed he feels. Vulnerable. At Erik’s mercy.  
  
“Do you hate me, Charles?” Erik asks, and it takes Charles by surprise. He stares at Erik, cursing that helmet, wishing he could better understand.  
  
“Erik—” Charles manages, longs to peel the helmet away, connect his thoughts to Erik – understand. “Erik… no. Of course I don’t.”  
  
Erik’s eyes fall again to Charles’ legs in a way that says _you should._  
  
“I… I must be truthful. I’m angry. I’m unhappy. But, no, I do not hate you, Erik. Perhaps… perhaps I wish I could forget some things, but…”  
  
“But you can’t forget,” Erik says softly. “The point is, you never can.”  
  
Charles smiles, as if in apology. He can and has made people forget before. He could do it again. He could do it to himself.   
  
“Yes,” he agrees. Wishing he could let him go. He asks, slowly, not daring to hope, “Will you remove it? That helmet.”  
  
Erik is silent. Then says, “So you can learn all the Brotherhood’s plans?”  
  
“Really, Erik,” Charles says with a sigh. But he’d expected the answer. He smiles, apologetic. “I won’t read your mind. It’s just disconcerting not to feel your mind _at all._ I’ll begin to think I’m going mad, merely speaking to a ghost.”  
  
Erik is silent, but something in his eyes makes Charles think that maybe he’ll be successful.  
  
Sure enough, a moment later Erik’s fingers curl around the edge of his helmet and lifts. Erik’s mind – beautiful, comforting, familiar – blooms out into the room and it nearly startles Charles just how close he is. The thoughts are guarded, ready to retreat and Charles respects that uncertainty, making sure his mind doesn’t brush too hard against Erik’s, no matter how completely he wishes for it. Charles closes his eyes, taking a shuddering breath.  
  
“Erik.”  
  
Yes, it’s Erik. Right there. Right now. After so long, it is almost aching how close he is. How long it’s been. How easy it is, in that moment, to know Erik again. How easy it is to match up an expression preciously encrypted and understand it – pained, longing, but stubborn determination. How easy to understand the guilt Erik carries and refuses to acknowledge, refuses to repent. Regret that he couldn’t be the person Charles saw – but no remorse for who he will become.  
  
And because of and despite it all, Charles knows he forgives Erik, knows he always would.  
  
He is not as foolish as Erik must think him. He knows and knew when he dove after Erik, it would most likely lead to this opposition. He knew how powerful Erik would become, knew exactly what he was doing. And though he longed – as he longs now – for Erik to find the peaceful route, to swerve from the path that would lead him to act as those who would extermination and imprison millions of innocents, he knows and knew then that it was a risk. That Erik was not the same as him.  
  
That they wanted different things.  
  
But that does not change a thing. He knows because his body remembers what he might have wished to forget – he holds out his hand to Erik. Holds his breath. Waits.  
  
And Erik takes it.  
  
Charles breathes out in a shaky breath, presses his lips against Erik’s knuckles in a choked kiss.  
  
“Excuse me,” Charles says, politely, clearing his throat. He strokes his thumb against Erik’s knuckles before drawing his hand away.  
  
Erik’s hand falls to his knee, holds itself there as if afraid it’ll fall right through. It’s strange, seeing it. And it’s only because it’s Erik that he doesn’t wheel himself away from the liberty of such a touch.   
  
Charles breathes out a sigh. “I’m starting to forget. What it feels like to walk…” He feels Erik tense up, his thoughts bending away from his mind, determined to reveal nothing even if it’s plainly written on his face. Charles needs to say it. “It feels like a dream now. Even though hardly any time has passed.”  
  
Erik is silent. Charles, feeling bold, touches his cheek.  
  
“Do you say this to hurt me?” Erik asks, but doesn’t pull away from the touch. “I told you not to read my mind.”  
  
“And I haven’t,” Charles returns, the arrogance drifting back into his voice. “Mind’s do no work like books, my friend. I can’t just read from page to page. Minds are interesting things.”  
  
Erik’s brow furrows.   
  
“Just as each metal must feel different to you, so, too, does each unique mind feel different to me. They are not books, Erik. They are the essence of a living, breathing, changing person.”  
  
Erik says nothing.  
  
Charles breathes out, fingers tracing Erik’s jaw. “There are, of course, layers. The passing thoughts, images. But there are the connecting thoughts – the off-shoots left unfollowed. There are the underscoring thoughts one is determined not to think. There are the memories. Those remembered organically, those triggered by smell, for instance,” Charles hums out. “There is so much that occurs in only the blink of an eye, and unless I delve into know _Everything_ , it’s gone forever for me – living only in that mind.”  
  
He closes his eyes, collecting his thoughts. He isn’t sure why he’s gone off in this manner, outlining it all as much as he can to someone who will never quite understand the feeling. The only mind Erik could ever know, beyond his own, is Charles’ – and only as much as Charles will let him. Only as much as Erik will let him.   
  
“There are those who think in words. In images. In one or two senses only. In vivid colors or black and white. There are those who have words with specific colors or textures or smells or sounds. The number three can be the color purple. Pineapples can be the sound of a certain bird. The mind is an endless field, an endless enigma.”  
  
He finally falls quiet, but then laughs.  
  
“So, no, Erik. I did not read your mind. When I do this…” He pauses, brushing his mind against Erik’s. “I am only reassuring myself you are here, feeling the soft bursts of your emotions.” His other hand lifts and touches Erik’s other cheek. “You can’t hide those things from me, truly.”  
  
“And when you control others…”  
  
“… It’s me becoming part of them. I think and see and _feel_ everything they do.”  
  
There is a stilled silence – long enough for a coin to drop, or, perhaps, to pass through the skull of a connected mind. But the words are not spoken. And the moment passes.  
  
Charles smiles. “Here I am rambling on. You’re here for business, of course, and I’ve held you up terribly.”  
  
He retreats again, the aggressive politeness serving as his shield. His hands fall away.  
  
“Stop playing the fool,” Erik snaps after a moment, sounding bitter.  
  
“The fool? Surely not,” Charles says pleasantly. It is self-preservation. It hurts too much to linger. It hurts.   
  
But he can see it in Erik’s eyes, feel the burn of it against the corners of his mind, despite Erik’s efforts to suppress it. Charles can feel it, feel how desperately Erik wants Charles to come with him. How completely he despises Charles’ views on humanity.  
  
Charles touches Erik’s cheek, touch light. How deeply regret runs.  
  
“Connect our minds,” Erik says, suddenly.  
  
“I’m sorry?” Charles asks, surprised by the sudden command.  
  
“Connect our minds. You’ll be able to remember the feel of walking.”  
  
Charles closes his eyes. “And you’ll learn the plans to Cerebro in exchange?”  
  
“Surely a telepath like you could hide what you didn’t wish me to know.”  
  
Charles laughs. “Not from you.” He adds, quickly, “Not if our minds were truly connected.”  
  
Charles opens his eyes again, and then he breathes out.  
  
“Very well,” he says –   
  
—And then they are connected. Everything unfurls between them and there is no line between one mind and another. There is only one, and the thoughts and images and memories drift as one. There is no separation.  
  
And then Erik lifts himself to his feet, strides across the room in an ambling confidence not unlike Charles’ old pace. The movement is steady and Charles can feel the flow of the movements, the touch of feet against the ground, the swishing movement. Everything.  
  
It’s everything – and how crushing to know it can never be his. None of it.


End file.
